His hunger satisfied, he leaned back with a deep sigh of relief. That there were humans in that silent city was evidenced by the fresh food, and perhaps every dark corner concealed a lurking enemy. But he felt no apprehension on that score, having a large confidence in his own fighting ability. He began to feel sleepy, and considered the idea of stretching himself on a near-by couch for a nap.
Not so Natala. She was no longer hungry and thirsty, but she felt no desire to sleep. Her lovely eyes were very wide indeed as she timidly glanced at the doorways, boundaries of the unknown. The silence and mystery of the strange place preyed on her. The chamber seemed larger, the table longer than she had first noticed, and she realized that she was farther from her grim protector than she wished to be. Rising quickly, she went around the table and seated herself on his knee, glancing nervously at the arched doorways. Some were lighted and some were not, and it was at the unlighted ones she gazed longest.
`We have eaten, drunk and rested,' she urged. `Let us leave this place, Conan. It's evil. I can feel it.'
`Well, we haven't been harmed so far,' he began, when a soft but sinister rustling brought him about. Thrusting the girl off his knee he rose with the quick ease of a panther, drawing his saber, facing the doorway from which the sound had seemed to come. It was not repeated, and he stole forward noiselessly, Natala following with her heart in her mouth. She knew he suspected peril. His outthrust head was sunk between his giant shoulders, he glided forward in a half crouch, like a stalking tiger. He made no more noise than a tiger would have made.
At the doorway he halted, Natala peering fearfully from behind him. There was no light in the room, but it was partially illuminated by the radiance behind them, which streamed across it into yet another chamber. And in this chamber a man lay on a raised dais. The soft light bathed him, and they saw he was a counterpart of the man Conan had killed before the outer gate, except that his garments were richer, and ornamented with jewels which twinkled in the uncanny light. Was he dead, or merely sleeping? Again came that faint sinister sound, as if some one had thrust aside a hanging. Conan drew back, drawing the clinging Natala with him. He clapped his hand over her mouth just in time to check her shriek.
From where they now stood, they could no longer see the dais, but they could see the shadow it cast on the wall behind it. And now another shadow moved across the wall: a huge shapeless black blot. Conan felt his hair prickle curiously as he watched. Distorted though it might be, he felt that he had never seen a man or beast which cast such a shadow. He was consumed with curiosity, but some instinct held him frozen in his tracks. He heard Natala's quick panting gasps as she stared with dilated eyes. No other sound disturbed the tense stillness. The great shadow engulfed that of the dais. For a long instant only its black bulk was thrown on the smooth wall. Then slowly it receded, and once more the dais was etched darkly against the wall. But the sleeper was no longer upon it.
An hysterical gurgle rose in Natala's throat, and Conan gave her an admonitory shake. He was aware of an iciness in his own veins. Human foes he did not fear; anything understandable, however grisly, caused no tremors in his broad breast. But this was beyond his ken.
After a while, however, his curiosity conquered his uneasiness, and he moved out into the unlighted chamber again, ready for anything. Looking into the other room, he saw it was empty. The dais stood as he had first seen it, except that no bejeweled human lay thereon. Only on its silken covering shone a single drop of blood, like a great crimson gem. Natala saw it and gave a low choking cry, for which Conan did not punish her. Again he felt the icy hand of fear. On that dais a man had lain; something had crept into the chamber and carried him away. What that something was, Conan had no idea, but an aura of unnatural horror hung over those dim-lit chambers.
He was ready to depart. Taking Natala's hand, he turned back, then hesitated. Somewhere back among the chambers they had traversed, he heard the sound of a footfall. A human foot, bare or softly shod, had made that sound, and Conan, with the wariness of a wolf, turned quickly aside. He believed he could come again into the outer court, and yet avoid the room from which the sound had appeared to come.
But they had not crossed the first chamber on their new route, when the rustle of a silken hanging brought them about suddenly. Before a curtained alcove stood a man eyeing them intently.
He was exactly like the others they had encountered: tall, well made, clad in purple garments, with a jeweled girdle. There was neither surprize nor hostility in his amber eyes. They were dreamy as a lotus-eater's. He did not draw the short sword at his side. After a tense moment he spoke, in a far-away detached tone, and a language his hearers did not understand.
On a venture Conan replied in Stygian, and the stranger answered in the same tongue: `Who are you?'
`I am Conan, a Cimmerian,' answered the barbarian. `This is Natala, of Brythunia. What city is this?'
The man did not at once reply. His dreamy sensuous gaze rested on Natala, and he drawled, `Of all my rich visions, this is the strangest! Oh, girl of the golden locks, from what far dreamland do you come? From Andarra, or Tothra, or Kuth of the star-girdle?'
`What madness is this?' growled the Cimmerian harshly, not relishing the man's words or manner.
The other did not heed him.
`I have dreamed more gorgeous beauties,' he murmured; `lithe women with hair dusky as night, and dark eyes of unfathomed mystery. But your skin is white as milk, your eyes as clear as dawn, and there is about you a freshness and daintiness alluring as honey. Come to my couch, little dream-girl!'
He advanced and reached for her, and Conan struck aside his hand with a force that might have broken his arm. The man reeled back, clutching the numbed member, his eyes clouding.
`What rebellion of ghosts is this?' he muttered. `Barbarian, I command ye - begone! Fade! Dissipate! Fade! Vanish!'
`I'll vanish your head from your shoulders!' snarled the infuriated Cimmerian, his saber gleaming in his hand. `Is this the welcome you give strangers? By Crom, I'll drench these hangings in blood!'
The dreaminess had faded from the other's eyes, to be replaced by a look of bewilderment.
`Thog!' he ejaculated. `You are real! Whence come you? Who are you? What do you in Xuthal?'
`We came from the desert,' Conan growled. `We wandered into the city at dusk, famishing. We found a feast set for some one, and we ate it. I have no money to pay for it. In my country, no starving man is denied food, but you civilized people must have your recompense - if you are like all I ever met. We have done no harm and we were just leaving. By Crom, I do not like this place, where dead men rise, and sleeping men vanish into the bellies of shadows!'
The man started violently at the last comment, his yellow face turning ashy.
`What do you say? Shadows? Into the bellies of shadows?'
`Well,' answered the Cimmerian cautiously, `whatever it is that takes a man from a sleeping-dais and leaves only a spot of blood.'
`You have seen? You have seen?' The man was shaking like a leaf; his voice cracked on the high-pitched note.
`Only a man sleeping on a dais, and a shadow that engulfed him,' answered Conan.
The effect of his words on the other was horrifying. With an awful scream the man turned and rushed from the chamber. In his blind haste he caromed from the side of the door, righted himself, and fled through the adjoining chambers, still screaming at the top of his voice. Amazed, Conan stared after him, the girl trembling as she clutched the giant's arm. They could no longer see the flying figure, but they still heard his frightful screams, dwindling in the distance, and echoing as from vaulted roofs. Suddenly one cry, louder than the others, rose and broke short, followed by blank silence.
`Crom!'
Conan wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a hand that was not entirely steady.
`Surely this is a city of the mad! Let's get out of here, before we meet other madmen!'
`It is all a nightmare!' whimpered Natala. `We are dea
d and damned! We died out on the desert and are in hell! We are disembodied spirits - ow!' Her yelp was induced by a resounding spank from Conan's open hand.
`You're no spirit when a pat makes you yell like that,' he commented, with the grim humor which frequently manifested itself at inopportune times. `We are alive, though we may not be if we loiter in this devil-haunted pile. Come!'
They had traversed but a single chamber when again they stopped short. Some one or something was approaching. They faced the doorway whence the sounds came, waiting for they knew not what. Conan's nostrils widened, and his eyes narrowed. He caught the faint scent of the perfume he had noticed earlier in the night. A figure framed itself in the doorway. Conan swore under his breath; Natala's red lips opened wide.
It was a woman who stood there staring at them in wonder. She was tall, lithe, shaped like a goddess; clad in a narrow girdle crusted with jewels. A burnished mass of night-black hair set off the whiteness of her ivory body. Her dark eyes, shaded by long dusky lashes, were deep with sensuous mystery. Conan caught his breath at her beauty, and Natala stared with dilated eyes. The Cimmerian had never seen such a woman; her facial outline was Stygian, but she was not dusky-skinned like the Stygian women he had known; her limbs were like alabaster.
But when she spoke, in a deep rich musical voice, it was in the Stygian tongue.
`Who are you? What do you in Xuthal? Who is that girl?'
`Who are you?' bluntly countered Conan, who quickly wearied of answering questions.
`I am Thalis the Stygian,' she replied. `Are you mad, to come here?'
`I've been thinking I must be,' he growled. `By Crom, if I am sane, I'm out of place here, because these people are all maniacs. We stagger in from the desert, dying of thirst and hunger, and we come upon a dead man who tries to stab me in the back. We enter a palace rich and luxuriant, yet apparently empty. We find a meal set, but with no feasters. Then we see a shadow devour a sleeping man-' He watched her narrowly and saw her change color slightly. `Well?'
`Well what?' she demanded, apparently regaining control of herself.
`I was just waiting for you to run through the rooms howling like a wild woman,' he answered. `The man I told about the shadow did.'
She shrugged her slim ivory shoulders. `That was the screams I heard, then. Well, to every man his fate, and it's foolish to squeal like a rat in a trap. When Thog wants me, he will come for me.'
`Who is Thog?' demanded Conan suspiciously.
She gave him a long appraising stare that brought color to Natala's face and made her bite her small red lip.
`Sit down on that divan and I will tell you,' she said. `But first tell me your names.'
`I am Conan, a Cimmerian, and this is Natala, a daughter of Brythunia,' he answered. `We are refugees of an army destroyed on the borders of Kush. But I am not desirous of sitting down, where black shadows might steal up on my back.'
With a light musical laugh, she seated herself, stretching out her supple limbs with studied abandon.
`Be at ease,' she advised. `If Thog wishes you, he will take you, wherever you are. That man you mentioned, who screamed and ran - did you not hear him give one great cry, and then fall silent? In his frenzy, he must have run full into that which he sought to escape. No man can avoid his fate.'
Conan grunted non-committally, but he sat down on the edge of a couch, his saber across his knees, his eyes wandering suspiciously about the chamber. Natala nestled against him, clutching him jealously, her legs tucked up under her. She eyed the stranger woman with suspicion and resentment. She felt small and dust-stained and insignificant before this glamorous beauty, and she could not mistake the look in the dark eyes which feasted on every detail of the bronzed giant's physique.
`What is this place, and who are these people?' demanded Conan.
`This city is called Xuthal; it is very ancient. It is built over an oasis, which the founders of Xuthal found in their wanderings.
They came from the east, so long ago that not even their descendants remember the age.'
`Surely there are not many of them; these palaces seem empty.'
`No; and yet more than you might think. The city is really one great palace, with every building inside the walls closely connected with the others. You might walk among these chambers for hours and see no one. At other times, you would meet hundreds of the inhabitants.'
`How is that?' Conan inquired uneasily; this savored too strongly of sorcery for comfort.
`Much of the time these people lie in sleep. Their dream-life is as important - and to them as real - as their waking life. You have heard of the black lotus? In certain pits of the city it grows. Through the ages they have cultivated it, until, instead of death, its juice induces dreams, gorgeous and fantastic. In these dreams they spend most of their time. Their lives are vague, erratic, and without plan. They dream, they wake, drink, love, eat and dream again. They seldom finish anything they begin, but leave it half completed and sink back again into the slumber of the black lotus. That meal you found - doubtless one awoke, felt the urge of hunger, prepared the meal for himself, then forgot about it and wandered away to dream again.'
`Where do they get their food?' interrupted Conan. `I saw no fields or vineyards outside the city. Have they orchards and cattle-pens within the walls?'
She shook her head. `They manufacture their own food out of the primal elements. They are wonderful scientists, when they are not drugged with their dream-flower. Their ancestors were mental giants, who built this marvelous city in the desert, and though the race became slaves to their curious passions, some of their wonderful knowledge still remains. Have you wondered about these lights? They are jewels, fused with radium. You rub them with your thumb to make them glow, and rub them again, the opposite way, to extinguish them. That is but a single example of their science. But much they have forgotten. They take little interest in waking life, choosing to lie most of the time in death-like sleep.'
`Then the dead man at the gate-' began Conan.
`Was doubtless slumbering. Sleepers of the lotus are like the dead. Animation is apparently suspended. It is impossible to detect the slightest sign of life. The spirit has left the body and is roaming at will through other, exotic worlds. The man at the gate was a good example of the irresponsibility of these people's lives. He was guarding the gate, where custom decrees a watch be kept, though no enemy has ever advanced across the desert. In other parts of the city you would find other guards, generally sleeping as soundly as the man at the gate.'
Conan mulled over this for a space.
`Where are the people now?'
`Scattered in different parts of the city; lying on couches, on silken divans, in cushion-littered alcoves, on fur-covered daises; all wrapt in the shining veil of dreams.'
Conan felt the skin twitch between his massive shoulders. It was not soothing to think of hundreds of people lying cold and still throughout the tapestried palaces, their glassy eyes turned unseeingly upward. He remembered something else.
`What of the thing that stole through the chambers and carried away the man on the dais?'
A shudder twitched her ivory limbs.
`That was Thog, the Ancient, the god of Xuthal, who dwells in the sunken dome in the center of the city. He has always dwelt in Xuthal. Whether he came here with the ancient founders, or was here when they built the city, none knows. But the people of Xuthal worship him. Mostly he sleeps below the city, but sometimes at irregular intervals he grows hungry, and then he steals through the secret corridors and the dim-lit chambers, seeking prey. Then none is safe.'
Natala moaned with terror and clasped Conan's mighty neck as if to resist an effort to drag her from her protector's side.
`Crom!' he ejaculated aghast. `You mean to tell me these people lie down calmly and sleep, with this demon crawling among them?'
`It is only occasionally that he is hungry,' she repeated. `A god must have his sacrifices. When I was a child in Stygia the people lived under the sha
dow of the priests. None ever knew when he or she would be seized and dragged to the altar. What difference whether the priests give a victim to the gods, or the god comes for his own victim?'
`Such is not the custom of my people,' Conan growled, `nor of Natala's either. The Hyborians do not sacrifice humans to their god, Mitra, and as for my people - by Crom, I'd like to see a priest try to drag a Cimmerian to the altar! There'd be blood spilt, but not as the priest intended.'
`You are a barbarian,' laughed Thalis, but with a glow in her luminous eyes. `Thog is very ancient and very terrible.'
`These folk must be either fools or heroes,' grunted Conan, `to lie down and dream their idiotic dreams, knowing they might awaken in his belly.'
She laughed. `They know nothing else. For untold generations Thog has preyed on them. He has been one of the factors which have reduced their numbers from thousands to hundreds. A few more generations and they will be extinct, and Thog must either fare forth into the world for new prey, or retire to the underworld whence he came so long ago.
`They realize their ultimate doom, but they are fatalists, incapable of resistance or escape. Not one of the present generation has been out of sight of these walls. There is an oasis a day's march to the south - I have seen it on the old maps their ancestors drew on parchment - but no man of Xuthal has visited it for three generations, much less made any attempt to explore the fertile grasslands which the maps show lying another day's march beyond it. They are a fast-fading race, drowned in lotus dreams, stimulating their waking hours by means of the golden wine which heals wounds, prolongs life, and invigorates the most sated debauchee.
The Conan Compendium Page 566